Saving data, especially e-mail and informal chats, is a liability.
It’s also a security risk: the risk of exposure. The exposure could be accidental. It could be the result of data theft, as happened to Sony. Or it could be the result of litigation. Whatever the reason, the best security against these eventualities is not to have the data in the first place.
via The importance of deleting old stuff—another lesson from the Sony attack | Ars Technica.
Our private cloud configuration allows our CIOs the luxury of not focusing on bandwidth because it always works. We’ve been able to layer value-added services on top of it — more traditional services like bandwidth as a service, software as a service, backup as a service, and virtual data centers as a service. Our institutions now can focus on students and the value they add to our schools, not on IT as a standalone commodity.
via The unbelievable benefits of the USG CIO’s bottomless bucket of bandwidth | The Enterprisers Project.
The plan calls for IBM will resell Apple devices with its software pre-installed. IBM activation, management and security software are also involved in the deal. The partnership aims to give Apple the credibility it still has not quite achieved in IT departments and bring IBM into a popular mobile ecosystem.
via Apple, IBM partnership yields first results: 10 mobile apps | ITworld.
The data collection does not happen automatically. There is a several-step process for team owners to request access, which includes sending a signed letter on company letterhead to Slack stating that the company’s policies allow that kind of access. Each request is reviewed by Slack for approval, the company says.
Once granted, workers on the team are notified of the data access, which includes all messages from that point forward. The feature is not retroactive.
via Slack now letting employers tap workers’ private chats | ITworld.
From: Slack: Be less busy.
Slack is a platform for team communication: everything in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go.
IBM’s revenues are declining because there’s a big shift going on in the way companies are buying tech. Instead of buying their own software and hardware for their own data centers, then hiring expensive consultants to stitch it all together, they are renting that technology, which is often hosted elsewhere. That’s called “cloud computing.”
All the big tech firms are shifting from the old way of selling stuff to this new way with varying degrees of success: SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Dell, HP and IBM are all getting into the cloud.
via Mark Cuban: IBM Is Not A Tech Company – Business Insider.
The team hopes one day fans will root for bots the way they do for racing’s Jeff Gordon, ultimate fighting’s Ronda Rousey, and boxing’s Floyd Mayweather, Jr.
via MegaBots At New York Comic Con – Business Insider.
In a MegaBots battle, a two-member team sits inside the bot’s upper torso, where the controls systems are housed. Although the co-founders assure me that the pilot and gunner are well protected inside, the situation presents a heightened suspense.
Each 15,000-pound robot is equipped with six-inch cannons inside its arms that fire paint-filled missiles and cannon balls at 120 miles per hour. Good aim can cause enough damage to jam its opponent’s weapons system or shoot of a limb. “These aren’t Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots,” Stroup laughs.
But on Monday – four days after learning the Guardian intended to publish this story – Whisper rewrote its terms of service; they now explicitly permit the company to establish the broad location of people who have disabled the app’s geolocation feature.
Whisper has developed an in-house mapping tool that allows its staff to filter and search GPS data, pinpointing messages to within 500 meters of where they were sent.
via Revealed: how Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users | Technology | The Guardian.
Whisper, which was recently valued at over $200m, has grown rapidly since its launch two years ago. It is among the fleet of confessional apps, such as Secret and Yik Yak, which backers say enable users to be more candid than they are on other social media platforms.
The American model is powered by private, for-profit organizations. On the next level down, consumers are facing a Balkanized patchwork of cable, fiber, and DSL services with minimal competition and zero infrastructure sharing. Flooding or overriding this system with government support would be politically impossible, so we’re stuck with this framework. That means focusing on profits over service quality, and there is no incentive at all to lower the cost to consumers.
via How Come My ISP Won’t Increase Internet Speed and Lower My Bill, Like They Do in Sweden? (VZ).
As many of you may know, Cyanogen is built from Android source code, with layers upon layers of custom code placed on top. These changes allow for users to highly customize the look and feel of the OS. For example, users running Cyanogen can place custom skins on the OS and also increase a device’s security thanks to additional settings. There are countless developers that contribute their code to make Cyanogen a better alternative to vanilla Android, which is provided straight from Google as open source.
Cyanogen has told potential investors that it has a deal in place to bring its custom version of the Android OS to India through a manufacturer called Micromax. Alongside Samsung, Micromax currently holds almost as much share of the smartphone market in India, making this deal a very large step to get Cyanogen into the hands of millions of more people.
The cartel’s grip on the lightbulb market lasted only into the 1930s. Its far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the incandescent lightbulb. By early 1925, this became codified at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped household bulb, a marked reduction from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours that had previously been common. Cartel members rationalized this approach as a trade-off: Their lightbulbs were of a higher quality, more efficient, and brighter burning than other bulbs. They also cost a lot more. Indeed, all evidence points to the cartel’s being motivated by profits and increased sales, not by what was best for the consumer. In carefully crafting a lightbulb with a relatively short life span, the cartel thus hatched the industrial strategy now known as planned obsolescence..
